One 2019 UK report (https://www.icax.co.uk/pdf/Absolute_Zero_Report.pdf) proposes a timeline that's been circulating on Twitter, involving the closure of all airports and shutting down all international shipping by 2050, while pricing 40% of traffic off the roads and banning beef+lamb. That (along with many more less-drastic but still significant restrictions) is what it would take to reach 'net zero' with current technology.
And that was written in 2019, when people were generally a lot more reasonable than they are in the post-Covid world.
(Do they even realise what they're proposing by 'no international shipping'... Amongst many other things, that means zero microchips for the UK, let alone complete technology products such as phones, TVs, or EVs)
Meanwhile in the real world (here in the UK), we've got a massive cost-of-living crisis, a collapsing healthcare system, a disaster of a property market, and a rising population that we're failing to build infrastructure to cope with. We have a a terribly incompetent government, and an opposition that seems no better. And we're living with the threat of WW3, the tail end of the pandemic, and now a banking crisis too.
> We currently have no non-emitting freight ships, so there is an urgent need for exploration of means to electrify ship power
It seems like you are the one "catastrophising".
What if it is a catastrophe? Should we pretend otherwise?
The word 'catastrophize' implies that the speaker is creating the catastrophe. Climate change sure seems like one to me, whether anyone says it or not.
While I don't want to try and defend every right wing policy, the crowd who think global warming is the biggest challenge we face have been outplayed by the very real disasters and escalations we've been facing since 2020. The well resourced anti-US axis that is developing between Russia and China is a much bigger threat than difficulties adjusting to climate change. Which have generally been fairly minor challenges in the official reporting.
All the evidence I see is I'm more likely to die in a fire caused by soldiers than power plants.
That's why it will be very difficult for us to find any common ground. Even though I am very much a free market guy and definitely don't agree with every policy on the left. The right down plays, ignores or ridicules global warming. How one can read the IPCC report and doesn't feel any sense of urgency is beyond me. This shouldn't even be a left or right issue.
1. Attacking the left brings them support
2. Their carbon industry supporters.
Your argument is assumptions - that climate change isn't the biggest challenge, that others are bigger.
> The well resourced anti-US axis that is developing between Russia and China is a much bigger threat than difficulties adjusting to climate change. Which have generally been fairly minor challenges in the official reporting.
What is "official reporting"?
China and Russia feature quite largely in the news. It's hard to imagine them getting more coverage.
What makes you believe we have any control over the climate?
What makes you believe that in a sham democracy, your vote makes any difference?
CO2 has two vibrational modes that are IR active. We release carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere that was previously bound inside the earth's crust. Humans increased the CO2 concentration from 280ppm to 420ppm (pre-industrial -> today). The science is settled. Whether you believe in it or not: Global warming is happening and humans are causing it. I understand that it is something you don't want to be true (and trust me, I would also love if it turned out to be wrong). But physics doesn't care if you want it to be true or not.
Well, we'll see. There are predictions of global devastation within the next decade.
> But physics doesn't care if you want it to be true or not.
It's not about that. Rather it's about the law of slow-moving disasters.
For example, what if I told you there was a train coming down the tracks that is about to flatten you. Would you be scared? What if I told you it was coming at you at 1cm/year. Would you be scared then?
This is the law of slow-moving disasters. We tend not to notice them in practice. If the weather changes year to year on the time-scale of decades or centuries, the rate of change is so low that buildings will simply be replaced over time. In extreme cases, populations will migrate.
Ancient humans have lived in climates both much warmer, and much cooler than those we currently experience.
> trust me, I would also love if it turned out to be wrong
I think I trust you. You seem like a stand-up guy, but understand that there is a huge amount of power to be distilled out of this. So there are a great number of people who are heavily incentivised to look the other way if there are any unanswered questions.
For a parallel example, see the refusal to acknowledge side effects including mycardiatus from COVID vaccinations.
I never really got this argument: There are even more powerful and even richer people that have incentives that nothing changes: ExxonMobile, Koch Industries, BP, Volkswagen, BMW, GM, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc.
We've already 'seen'. The science is, of course, based on an enormous amount of empirical evidence. We can always just say, 'we'll see what happens next', but it's a bizarre argument - on that basis you never act.
Speaking this way breaks the conversation.